Anti-transcendentalists v. Transcendentalists
The philosophical belief of anti-transcendentalism and transcendentalism has been tossed around during the literary era in the 19th century. Transcendentalism was a movement during the New England Renaissance that emphasized individuality, intuition, and self-reliance; the following writers are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and their works such as Nature, Self-Reliance, Walden, and Civil Disobedience. As anti-transcendentalism focuses on the limitations and potential destructiveness of the human spirit rather than its possibilities and the writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. From Henry David Thoreau, Walden, and from Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil. Between the two beliefs, there are many similarities and differences that could be explained with one of the works of literature from one of the believers of each group.
“The Minister’s Black Veil,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a story about how one mans change in appearance can change the way people act to him. “There is an hour to come… when all of us shall cast aside our veils (Hawthorne 273).” This quote meant that everybody would reveal their sins sooner or later. In this story, Mr. Hooper, the minister, showed up one day in church with a black crape veil shadowing his face but not covering his mouth and his chin. People just stared as he walked by and greeted them, but no response to what he had said. “Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other...I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil! (Hawthorne 276).” Why should they, the people, point and stare at a man just representing his sin by putting on a veil. The people should be looking at one another as if they had his black veil on for their own and see how people would act to them. He said that to make people think of what they had done to him and think of it as if they were in his shoes. In a anti-transcendentalist mind, if...